I am a Japanese philosopher and a professor of History and Philosophy of Science Program at the University of Tokyo, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Before coming to U Tokyo, I was a professor of philosophy at Nanzan University, Nagoya. From 2011 to 2013, I was a visiting research scholar of Philosophy Program at Graduate Center, the City University of New York.
My field of specialization is philosophy of mind, especially the problem of consciousness. I am also working on philosophy of artificial intelligence, experimental philosophy, and metaphilosophy.
Recent (International) Activities
Research Areas
Though I am a philosopher, I have been strongly interested in psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and other empirical sciences. My policy is to do philosophy in an empirically informed way, but also with rigor of analytic philosophy.
These are the topics I am interested in and have been working on.
Consciousness
This is the theme of my dissertation. Basically I am a physicalist and so I am looking for a plausible naturalistic theory of consciousness. In my dissertation, I defended my own (and more or less peculiar) version of first order representationalism. I also argued the following topics there; definition of physicalism, conceivability argument, knowledge argument, argument from illusion, type-B physicalism, HOR and HOT theories. I also published a book on this theme in 2015 (in Japanese).
Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence
I have been working on this topic in the last four or five years. My project here is basically to update philosophy of AI so that it can deal with contemporary AI (deep neural network, for example). My interest here is theoretical, rather than ethical. I am interested in the following issues: What are the differences between classical AI and contemporary AI? Which philosophical criticisms on classical AI are also effective on contemporary AI? What are the challenges and limitations of contemporary AI? What are the similarities and differences between human mind and contemporary AI? In February 2024, I published a book, An Introduction to Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence (in Japanese).
Experimental Philosophy
I am interested in both experimental study itself and its metaphilosophical implication. I have been working on the empirical study on free will, well-being, and other topics.
Metaphilosophy
Here I’m working on the issues such as the reliability and the role of intuition in philosophy, the significance of x-phi, the idea of philosophy as conceptual engineering, and the prospect of naturalistic philosophy.
Philosophy of Mind (Other Topics)
In my master thesis, I discussed the relationship between folk psychology and scientific psychology. There I tried to defend a kind of naive or pragmatic realism about folk psychology, based on the idea of Daniel Dennett and Terry Horgan. Now I am rather skeptical about this strategy.
I also wrote some papers on theory of mind, embodied mind, philosophy of psychiatry, and other topics related mind.
Neuroethics
My main interest here is the implication of empirical research on human decision-making on the philosophical problem of free will. I am also interested in the impact of neuroscience research on our society, especially the influence of pseudo-neuroscientific discourse. I also co-authored a book on neuroscience literacy, which deals with the problem of how we should and should not interpret the results of contemporary neuroscience studies.
A Little Bit More on Myself
I was born and raised in Kawasaki, the city located on the south of Tokyo metropolitan area.
I took BA from Philosophy Program at the University of Tokyo and received PhD from History and Philosophy of Science Program at the University of Tokyo.
Aside from philosophy, I love exercises (running, trekking, and trail running), listening to music, photography, and reading detective stories.
Contact
tkykszk at g dot ecc dot u-tokyo dot ac dot jp